Oh, dear. Doesn't sound like you've had a very fun day. And yeah, once you've folded the tea-towels, they need to go in the drawer, not on the stove. And no drying out of magazines in the oven after they fall into the bathtub, either.

Ah. A friend had a similar problem. She was sitting in her kitchen and starting hearing "pop pop pop" and discovered it was coming from her oven (which was cooking dinner.) Apparently it was also popping pop corn. She had a bag sitting on the stove top and was unaware that the heat venting from the rear of the stove top was enough to melt the bag. Pop corn poured down vent and into oven. Popped.

I’ve always thought that storing things in one’s oven is the first step on the slippery slope to a Collyer Brothers Apartment, as the firemen call them.

I saw a fireman knock a door down with one blow, a mere five seconds after he’d already knocked mine down. Even as I stood there with my mouth hanging open I felt the most intense admiration. No Hamletish indecision there.

But fires are super super scary. I’m sorry. Is your hair still the right color?

oh, my. Is the crapometer to blame? You were testing it weren't you, and there was residue stuck in the gears from last time around? Oh the horror, the sheer humanity, or in Yapps case the caninanity...wait, is that a word?Anyway, so sorry.*looking to see what she has in that little box marked for emergencies*uh, yeah, I think a few of us could do with the reminder...nothing but BoDog's retrieving dummy and a really out-of-date can of Dt. Pepsi.

Well, at least you are prepared for the crapometer and your slush pile. If you start anything on fire (including your hair or the slush pile), the firemen know where you live. The doorman knows to let them in. KY is prepared (I assume he has been fitted for a parachute so that he can safely leap out the window) and you not only have Gin, you have an extinguisher.

The only thing you need now is...well, food. Precooked, hopefully. :>)

And you thought you were being overprotective, making sure KY's Tam was fire-retardant...

Glad to here the family is fine.

Cooking is dangerous, so you should never do it. You shouldn't even have the appliances to do it, just in case. Especially in New York, where space is bent is such a way that your stove, bed, and toilet are only an inch a part. Although you *can* throw that toilet water on anything but a grease fire....

One assumes that the root cause was storing something (New York magazine, I gather) in the oven or on top of the stove, which which a sufficiently small apartment you might end up doing.

However, one also wonders...what was the...spark that set off the catastrophe? Someone either turning on the stove or pre-heating the oven?

Since this is the first post today, I will fondly hope that it was Mr. Clooney (or someone else, for that matter) who, after spending a very long night making Miss Snark forget all about her slush pile, was up and making her breakfast. In his rush (it's always difficult to make breakfast in someone else's kitchen) he turned on the wrong burner and set the New York magazine stack on fire.

If you had a small snark of your own, you would get to see beautiful firefighters at the fire station visit every year. Or when you need to make sure the car seat is in nice and tight. Whenever we visit, I take a lot of pictures, but my child is not always in them.

Reminds me of a case I saw on Judge Judy: one friend had another friend house sit. The house sitter turned on the oven, burned up all the stuff stored in it and killed the oven. The house sitter (the defendant) said he wanted to use the oven and that's what an oven's for. The plaintiff told the judge that that's not what her oven was for: "You should understand. I'm Jewish. I don't use my oven. I don't cook."

The house sitter lost because he didn't look first to see if there was something inside. He also failed to shut it off when he should have known something, (the odor), wasn't right.

I once had a fire inside my oven. Every time we opened the door flames flew out, every time we closed it the the fire went out completely. A clever friend started muttering about oxygen feed until a less clever, but more beefy bloke pushed him out of the way, soaked a cloth in water and put out the fire with that.

We did not eat well that night. But I did date the human fire extinguisher for a while.

Silver lining: Miss Snark again experiences transcendent gratitude at living in New York City, where residents live under the vigilant protection of NYFD, the slam-dunk finest looking public servants on the planet.

My mom has the habit of turning on wrong burners. Good thing her landlord who lives upstairs is a firefighter. I can sleep at night.

My sister in law and her husband decided to take a shower together, but beforehand he turned on the kettle for some tea. Well, he thought it was the tea kettle. It was actually the pot of oil on the back burner. They had to replace the whole kitchen.